Wireless connectivity is a feature of the modern telecommunications environment. An increasing range of people are using a wide variety of wireless data networks to access corporate data applications.
However, there are numerous competing mobile devices that can be used to achieve this. Each mobile device has its own operating system and its own display characteristics. Operating systems are not mutually compatible, nor are the display characteristics—some are color, some are black and white, some are text-only, some are pictorial.
To allow for applications to be executed on a variety of different mobile devices, often a virtual machine is employed. The virtual machine may be mobile-device-specific so that applications designed to run on the virtual machine need not be. However, in some cases, to execute an application on a virtual machine on a mobile device, a user may be required to open an interface associated with the virtual machine and then select an application to be executed by the virtual machine.
An increasing number of mobile device users are people without a technical background or high level of educational achievement. Such people are often intimidated by the need to first open the interface associated with the virtual machine and then select an application to be executed by the virtual machine.
Therefore, a mechanism is desired by which an application may be enabled for multiple mobile devices yet still appear, in a user interface for a given mobile device, among those applications specific to the given mobile device. That is, it is desirable that the execution of the application should be accomplished without the need for separately opening an interface to the virtual machine that runs the application.